Benefits of Parks and Recreation

Program 1
Creating Connections and Comprehension
Overview of the Benefits of Parks and Recreation

Appropriate for: Everyone directly or indirectly involved with parks and recreation

Essential for: All Staff, Volunteers, Board/Commission Members, Advocates

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
Become exposed to the benefits-based approach to parks and recreation by examining the four benefit areas. Discover how these Benefits impact our lives and society, as a whole, in real and concrete ways. Everyone from part time staff to agency director will gain valuable information to improve their performance, value and image.

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Understand and be able to identify the four major benefit areas of parks and recreation
• Change and upgrade their self perception and job value
• Gain new insight into how benefits impact their personal and professional lives
• View parks and recreation as critical and vital to our future quality of life

Needs Identification:
For too long, politicians, society and even park and recreation professionals, themselves have viewed programs and services as non-essential or discretionary. It's time that everyone involved in the profession understand its real value in terms or providing vital and critical benefits to individuals and communities. This re-positioning will be the foundation for building a strong future for the public parks and recreation programs.

Program 2
Reinventing Parks and Recreation
Benefits From the Inside Out

Appropriate for: All Staff

Essential for: Anyone involved in developing programs, people, policies or procedures for park and recreation agencies including all middle and upper level managers, supervisors and directors

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
Examine and learn to recreate your agency's culture, esteem and attitude by incorporating the Benefits of Parks and Recreation concept to your operations, management and internal communications. Evaluate how Benefits Driven your staff, programs and customer service really are while learning dozens of ways to infuse the Benefits Message into every aspect of your organization.

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Understand how to design, evaluate, create and eliminate programs and services based on the Benefits approach.
• Change how they interview, hire and train personnel and volunteers
• Learn dozens of ways to infuse the Benefits Message into internal communication and promotion.
• Re-examine operations, policies and procedures that inhibit and aid the Benefits process.

Needs Identification:
As more and more professionals learn the basic principals behind the Benefits Message, it is crucial to insure that changes begin from within. An image and repositioning campaign must first be understood and valued by the Benefits Providers, no matter what level of authority. Without the ongoing reconnection and consistent internal buy-in, the message will be perceived as "all talk, no action; lip service; and hot air." The reinvention process will assist agencies exceed Benefits Promises for internal and external "customers."

Program 3
Get the Word Out!
Moving the Benefits Message to External Audiences

Appropriate for: All Staff

Essential for: Anyone involved in any form of external communication or marketing including all middle and upper level managers, supervisors and directors

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
This program will focus on how to make an oral Benefits presentation to your high priority target audiences. Participants will review turn key scripts as well as create their own program to insure that they are meeting audience needs as well as reaching chosen objectives.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will learn:

• To name and prioritize at least five audiences who need to hear and understand the benefits message
• To become familiar with and practice incorporating research and quotations into presentations to increase credibility
• To write an opening, closing and key points for an upcoming presentation
• To increase comfort level as a presenter or speaker

Needs Identification:
The key to public parks and recreation survival is dependent upon politicians, taxpayers, business leaders, patrons and other key audiences outside the profession to understand and buy-in to the benefits message. By speaking formally or informally to these groups, practitioners will create a new understanding and value for their programs, spaces and places in solving individual and community problems and needs.

Program 3-B
Benefits Based Marketing
Developing a Plan to Move the Message

Appropriate for: All Staff

Essential for: Anyone involved in any form of external communication or marketing including all middle and upper level managers, supervisors and directors

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
This step-by-step workshop will guide you through the process of inventing strategies to help your agency or association promote the Benefits concept. Write a timeline beginning with specific objectives that will drive your newly created message home to your most valuable target audiences.

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will be able to:

• Identify and prioritize target audiences and the gatekeepers who can open their doors
• Examine different types of marketing vehicles to determine which ones will be most effective in meeting chosen objectives
• Create a Benefits Marketing theme and concept that will cause people to stop! look! listen! and take action!
• Create a simple, but ready to implement marketing timeline

Needs Identification:
As more professionals and agencies buy into the Benefits concept it is crucial they have tools and ideas to communicate the important message to decision makers and powers of influence. Without action the Benefits Message has little value. The Marketing Plan is the mandatory blueprint necessary to move the message forward in a creative, but systematic approach.

Program 4
Building Benefits Coalitions and Partnerships
When 1+1+1=6 Shared Solutions to Common Problems

Appropriate for: All Staff, Citizen Advisory Boards, Commissioners, etc

Essential for: Management, Citizen Advisory Boards, Commissioners, Anyone involved with fund development and advocacy building for the department

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
What do a police officer, a school teacher, a business leader, a high school senior and you have in common? Plenty! Especially the need to solve problems and deliver benefits to your community. Each person on the panel will explain what issues he or she and peers are facing. Together the panel will uncover ways to better work together, share resources and ideas to more effectively deliver benefits to common "customers."

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will learn:

• What issues and trends are driving each of these people and professions from a local, national and global perspective
• What to do and what not to do when trying to gain support or participation from each group
• How to communicate with each group so that they will listen, act and respond
• Ways in which you may be duplicating instead of complementing efforts
• How to change attitude form competitor to collaborator
• Secrets to working within the unique political structures
• What private sector businesses look when allocating sponsorship funds.
• How to stop duplicating efforts of other agencies by building unstoppable coalitions.
• Four components of Profitable Partnerships - Mission, Message, Marketing and Resources
• What you have that every for-profit business needs.

Needs Assessment:
The Benefits Approach to Parks and Recreation prescribes that problems and needs be identified, addressed and solved through a multitude of programs and services. This puts the "customer" or "problem" at the center of the model surrounded by various agencies each attempting to meet this customer's needs or solve the problem. This program will act as a catalyst for better working with priority park and recreation target audiences to provide ongoing benefits.

Program 3-B
Benefits Based Marketing
Developing a Plan to Move the Message

Appropriate for: All Staff

Essential for: Anyone involved in any form of external communication or marketing including all middle and upper level managers, supervisors and directors

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
This step-by-step workshop will guide you through the process of inventing strategies to help your agency or association promote the Benefits concept. Write a timeline beginning with specific objectives that will drive your newly created message home to your most valuable target audiences.

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will be able to:

• Identify and prioritize target audiences and the gatekeepers who can open their doors
• Examine different types of marketing vehicles to determine which ones will be most effective in meeting chosen objectives
• Create a Benefits Marketing theme and concept that will cause people to stop! look! listen! and take action!
• Create a simple, but ready to implement marketing timeline

Needs Identification:
As more professionals and agencies buy into the Benefits concept it is crucial they have tools and ideas to communicate the important message to decision makers and powers of influence. Without action the Benefits Message has little value. The Marketing Plan is the mandatory blueprint necessary to move the message forward in a creative, but systematic approach.

Full Day Comprehensive Benefits Training

Putting the Pieces Together
Overview, Internal & External Communications

Appropriate for: Everyone directly or indirectly involved with parks and recreation

Essential for: Middle and Upper Management, Marketing Staff, Program Supervisors,

Format: Combined Lecture, Large and Small Group Discussion, and Training Games and Activities

Workshop Description:
After years of research and development the National Recreation and Park Association is proud to offer this comprehensive full day workshop complete with training manual, video, activities, promotional products, and the latest compilation of field studies, quotations and research including the 1996 version of the Benefits Research Update. Participants will not only be exposed to the benefits-based approach to parks and recreation, but also learn how to apply this critical thinking to their own agency's internal and external communication and promotion. Combines introductory versions of "Creating Connections," "Reinventing Recreation" and "Get the Word Out!" into seven high impact hours of interactive education.

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Understand and be able to identify and articulate the four major benefit areas of parks and recreation
• Change and upgrade their self perception and job value from non essential to vital
• Gain new insight into how benefits impact their personal and professional lives
• To become familiar with and practice incorporating research and quotations into communications to establish and increase credibility
• Learn how to better create and develop programs to meet and exceed future benefits
• Learn hundreds of ways to infuse the Benefits Message into internal and external communication and promotion.
• Learn basic ways to market and sell the benefits message to decision makers, constituents and allies outside of the profession.
• Identify Priority External Target audiences and commit to communicating the benefits message to them

Needs Identification:
For too long, politicians, society and even park and recreation professionals, themselves have viewed programs and services as non-essential or discretionary. As those directly involved in the profession begin to develop a better understanding of the Benefits of Parks and Recreation it is critical to move from theory to application to implementation. The training, combined with it's manual and resources, provides consistent education, support and documentation for the entire profession. The ultimate goal is that Parks and Recreation Benefits will be common knowledge inside and outside the profession from coast to coast.